From the Earth to the Moon, by Jules Verne

Chapter 3

Effect of the President’s Communication

It is impossible to describe the effect produced by the last words of the honorable president — the cries, the
shouts, the succession of roars, hurrahs, and all the varied vociferations which the American language is capable of
supplying. It was a scene of indescribable confusion and uproar. They shouted, they clapped, they stamped on the floor
of the hall. All the weapons in the museum discharged at once could not have more violently set in motion the waves of
sound. One need not be surprised at this. There are some cannoneers nearly as noisy as their own guns.

Barbicane remained calm in the midst of this enthusiastic clamor; perhaps he was desirous of addressing a few more
words to his colleagues, for by his gestures he demanded silence, and his powerful alarum was worn out by its violent
reports. No attention, however, was paid to his request. He was presently torn from his seat and passed from the hands
of his faithful colleagues into the arms of a no less excited crowd.

Nothing can astound an American. It has often been asserted that the word “impossible” in not a French one. People
have evidently been deceived by the dictionary. In America, all is easy, all is simple; and as for mechanical
difficulties, they are overcome before they arise. Between Barbicane’s proposition and its realization no true Yankee
would have allowed even the semblance of a difficulty to be possible. A thing with them is no sooner said than
done.

The triumphal progress of the president continued throughout the evening. It was a regular torchlight procession.
Irish, Germans, French, Scotch, all the heterogeneous units which make up the population of Maryland shouted in their
respective vernaculars; and the “vivas,” “hurrahs,” and “bravos” were intermingled in inexpressible enthusiasm.

Just at this crisis, as though she comprehended all this agitation regarding herself, the moon shone forth with
serene splendor, eclipsing by her intense illumination all the surrounding lights. The Yankees all turned their gaze
toward her resplendent orb, kissed their hands, called her by all kinds of endearing names. Between eight o’clock and
midnight one optician in Jones’-Fall Street made his fortune by the sale of opera-glasses.

Midnight arrived, and the enthusiasm showed no signs of diminution. It spread equally among all classes of citizens
— men of science, shopkeepers, merchants, porters, chair-men, as well as “greenhorns,” were stirred in their innermost
fibres. A national enterprise was at stake. The whole city, high and low, the quays bordering the Patapsco, the ships
lying in the basins, disgorged a crowd drunk with joy, gin, and whisky. Every one chattered, argued, discussed,
disputed, applauded, from the gentleman lounging upon the barroom settee with his tumbler of sherry-cobbler before him
down to the waterman who got drunk upon his “knock-me-down” in the dingy taverns of Fell Point.

About two A.M., however, the excitement began to subside. President Barbicane reached his house, bruised, crushed,
and squeezed almost to a mummy. Hercules could not have resisted a similar outbreak of enthusiasm. The crowd gradually
deserted the squares and streets. The four railways from Philadelphia and Washington, Harrisburg and Wheeling, which
converge at Baltimore, whirled away the heterogeneous population to the four corners of the United States, and the city
subsided into comparative tranquility.

On the following day, thanks to the telegraphic wires, five hundred newspapers and journals, daily, weekly, monthly,
or bi-monthly, all took up the question. They examined it under all its different aspects, physical, meteorological,
economical, or moral, up to its bearings on politics or civilization. They debated whether the moon was a finished
world, or whether it was destined to undergo any further transformation. Did it resemble the earth at the period when
the latter was destitute as yet of an atmosphere? What kind of spectacle would its hidden hemisphere present to our
terrestrial spheroid? Granting that the question at present was simply that of sending a projectile up to the moon,
every one must see that that involved the commencement of a series of experiments. All must hope that some day America
would penetrate the deepest secrets of that mysterious orb; and some even seemed to fear lest its conquest should not
sensibly derange the equilibrium of Europe.

The project once under discussion, not a single paragraph suggested a doubt of its realization. All the papers,
pamphlets, reports — all the journals published by the scientific, literary, and religious societies enlarged upon its
advantages; and the Society of Natural History of Boston, the Society of Science and Art of Albany, the Geographical
and Statistical Society of New York, the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, and the Smithsonian of Washington sent
innumerable letters of congratulation to the Gun Club, together with offers of immediate assistance and money.

From that day forward Impey Barbicane became one of the greatest citizens of the United States, a kind of Washington
of science. A single trait of feeling, taken from many others, will serve to show the point which this homage of a
whole people to a single individual attained.

Some few days after this memorable meeting of the Gun Club, the manager of an English company announced, at the
Baltimore theatre, the production of “Much ado about Nothing.” But the populace, seeing in that title an allusion
damaging to Barbicane’s project, broke into the auditorium, smashed the benches, and compelled the unlucky director to
alter his playbill. Being a sensible man, he bowed to the public will and replaced the offending comedy by “As you like
it”; and for many weeks he realized fabulous profits.